Friday, November 28, 2008

There are two daily English Language newspapers in Nepal, the Himalayan Times and the Kathmandu Post, and both can be frustrating in their lack of context. It's common to read a 750 word story about the progress of a criminal court case, in which the crime and the people involved is never described. Or a story about a politician's bitter accusations against a rival party, without any response from the accused, or any reporting on whether the accusations are true.

But this week there came a story in the Himalayan Times about Kathmandu's quarterly crime statistics, and it had a really great sidebar on who the criminals are. Have a look.

(context on the context: the breakdown between vegetarian and non-vegetarian is a coded way of identifying high caste Brahmins, who are traditionally vegetarian.)